Tojisha Kenkyu Journal - Order of Operations

Jason and I bicker a lot. It gets intense when we are busy/under stress. I realized it's primarily because of his #ADHD clashing with my #ASD.
I am not prepared for ADHD. My pure ASD mind makes me a single-minded, hyperfocus, minimal, need-completion kind of girl. I have an order of operations that I must follow or I get a painful traffic jam in my head. So I get annoyed by his pinballing and he gets annoyed by my rigidity.
At first, I wanted him to take meds. This was coming from being told my whole life that I need meds to fix myself. But there is no medication that can cure ASD or ADHD - these meds simply make others more comfortable by blunting us - I am less "annoying", less depressed, less rigid, less talkative - less Autistic. "Quieter and more pliable", as one counselor put it. So I've projected something onto Jason that fundamentally hurt me, which is shitty.
I do love him, and the ADHD is part of him. So we are in a phase of our relationship where we have stopped drinking the way we did before and begun to abandon western medicine (I actually believe that alcohol is a type of western medicine). But now we have to learn how to live with each other without crutches. It's not easy!
Today I spent time considering my need for order of operations and Jason's tendency to pinball task to task. I now see similarities. When I have an end goal, I generate certain steps toward it and SEE it all happen in my mind. Every step moves the next domino and is premeditated. When Jason has a goal he just turns on a randomized order of operations. It's simply different and I need to stop judging it.
I started figuring this out when I failed at IDSVA, I realized afterward the schedule was so all over the place, that whenever I tried to follow my intended order, I was disrupted academically and this moved me from traffic jam to pile up to gridlock. I came home and Jason was nothing but compassionate. I realize Jason is dynamic in ways I wish to be and I think he unknowingly enjoys my ability to hyperfocus. I am balance for him and he is radical acceptance for me, which no other partner ever offered me. I should do the same. <3

Tojisha Kenkyu

Deer Isle, Maine, Today, 2022

There’s a method developed by researchers in Japan called “Tojisha Kenkyu” in which an autistic person is to learn themselves through journaling. Like any kind of journaling, the process empowers one to understand more directly their strengths and weaknesses and how to cope with them. I’ve been doing this since 2021, when I was informally diagnosed, and figuring out a lot of funny things. It’s like wandering through caves of my mind with a candle, illuminating places that were always dark before. It’s uplifting but also extremely sad sometimes. I guess it kind of draws you out in a way, which makes sense, considering that the term “Autism” was originally coined from the Greek word “Autos” which means “being inside”, or, as Oxford puts it, “with reference to a condition in which fantasy dominates over reality.”

I would say that the Oxford definition resonates pretty closely with my experience of life. Nothing inside ever matched up with the outside, and most of the time, I like what’s happening in my mind a lot better than anything else. The journaling has definitely helped me to align things a bit more, and to understand myself enough to attempt to fit in more naturally to my surroundings, especially with people. It’s also helped me to make better decisions for myself and calibrate an “inner compass” which relies less on what others want, more on what I do, think, feel. So, here it is. This is the journal side, with some tentative imagery, however please note that I intend to develop the imagery into a more multimedia practice when I find the space, money and time I need to take on such elaborations.